Pettus Plumbing & Piping Joins Sylvan Group Platform, Owners Staying On

What happened

On July 7, 2026, Sylvan Group, a multi-trade construction services platform founded in Michigan, announced that Pettus Plumbing & Piping, Inc., a mechanical contractor headquartered in Rogersville, Alabama, had joined it. Both companies described the deal as a partnership. Co-owners Tony Robertson and Grover Johnson will remain actively involved as equity owners in Sylvan. They and the Pettus leadership team will keep running Pettus while joining the Sylvan Group executive leadership team, reporting to Sylvan CEO Robert Metz. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The company

Gary Pettus founded the business in 1983 as an industrial piping contractor with two employees, one vehicle and a home office. It moved into facilities in Muscle Shoals in 1989, and in 2006 it bought a 32-acre site in Rogersville that now holds 68,000 square feet of offices, fabrication shops, shipping and receiving, a mechanic shop and storage.

The work spans HVAC and sheet metal fabrication, industrial and process piping, commercial plumbing, controls, and 24/7 emergency service, run as turnkey projects from design and engineering through installation. Pettus is licensed for mechanical work in 48 states and for general contracting in 38.

Its customers include national retailers such as Walmart, Target, Lowe's and Kroger; manufacturers including Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, Boeing and Blue Origin; and government clients including NASA, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Redstone Arsenal. "Our clients can expect the same exceptional quality, trusted relationships, and commitment to excellence they've always known from the Pettus team - now backed by the resources and reach of a premier national platform," Johnson said in the announcement.

The buyer

The Morrissey family founded Sylvan in 1956 as a residential plumbing company in Pontiac, Michigan, and it moved into commercial and industrial work in 1967. Between 1986 and 2016 it opened offices in Perth Amboy, New Jersey; Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee; and Windsor, Ontario, and it later expanded into Phoenix and Querétaro, Mexico. Blue Point Capital partnered with the company in 2018. Sylvan acquired Great Lakes Mechanical in 2021 and Anchor Conveyor Products in June 2024, and it now reports more than 3,000 employees across 17 offices.

In March 2025, E-3 Tech, LLC, a private investment company with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), became Sylvan's majority stakeholder. Blue Point and management stayed on as shareholders, and Metz remained CEO. Sylvan now pairs its trades with two AI products it backs: Jobotics, which turns construction project data into answers for project leaders, and Bowser, a coordination and planning tool for job sites. "With Pettus, we are adding established client relationships, deep trade expertise, expanded leadership in the south and leading-edge prefabrication capabilities that make the Sylvan Group platform even stronger," said Ruediger (Rudy) Adolf, founder and CEO of E-3 Tech.

How Sylvan structures its partnerships

Pettus is the second contractor to join Sylvan since E-3 Tech invested, and the arrangement announced for its owners mirrors the first. When Andy J. Egan Co., a Grand Rapids, Michigan, mechanical contractor founded in 1919, joined in November 2025, Sylvan said the Jasper family would remain actively involved in leading Egan and would become equity owners in Sylvan. The Pettus announcement puts Robertson and Johnson in the same position and adds seats on the group executive team. Owners weighing that kind of arrangement against other routes can read our guide on selling an HVAC business to private equity.

What this means for mechanical contracting owners

Under E-3 Tech, Sylvan has now twice brought in a decades-old, owner-run mechanical contractor with its own fabrication operation and kept the owners in charge as equity holders in the group. For Robertson and Johnson, part of what they hold now rests on how a Michigan-rooted group spanning several trades performs, not only on the Rogersville business they still run. For an owner with a comparable shop and national licensing, a platform built this way puts the group's prospects into the evaluation alongside the value of his own company.

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Source: Sylvan Group - https://www.sylvan-inc.com/sylvan-enters-into-landmark-partnership-with-pettus-plumbing-piping/